What Is The eBay Seller Hub?

eBay Seller Hub is eBay’s management tool for sellers to manage and grow their businesses on eBay. Originally it was possible for sellers to opt-out of using the eBay Seller Hub with the beta version of the product. Now it is a requirement that all eBay sellers manage their eBay businesses through the eBay Seller Hub. eBay is forcing sellers to use the eBay Seller Hub which has been raising concerns about what the company is doing, or could do, with all of that data, yet, there is another equally distressing concern to be aware of. eBay Seller Hub makes it easier for sellers to scam buyers by providing them with easy access to information about the people buying their products. After all, eBay Seller Hub offers sellers:

• Reports and dashboards for Sales, Selling Costs, Traffic, and Seller Standards.
• The ability to create and edit active listings.
• Promotions Manager—Free to eBay Store subscribers
• Promoted Listings—Available to eBay Store subscribers and non-Store subscribers in good standing
• Best Offer—Edit Best Offer in bulk, and Best Offer filter.
• "Offer to buyers"—Bulk "Offer to buyers," and "Offer to buyers" filter.
• Volume Pricing.

It also provides daily sales trends, a list of best performing listings, monthly sales, sales by country, page views and buyer traffic. In addition to sales tools, eBay Seller Hub also offers marketing tools that allows sellers to manage their brand by telling buyers why they should purchase their products, as well as the ability to promote their listings to increase the visibility of their products, to directly send offers to buyers interested in their products, and to create promotions.

How Is The eBay Seller Hub Helpful To Scammers?

By providing detailed information about buyers, the development of strategies, sales tools, and marketing tools has made it easier to directly target buyers based on their interest in specific products which has allowed eBay to provide more avenues for sellers to scam buyers and the direct contact for implementing their strategies. Furthermore, with detailed reports on interested buyers of specific products, as well as sales analytics based on geographical locations, sellers can easily determine the buyers who will most likely fall for an eBay seller scam. Ideally, utilizing such data should have positive outcomes ‘if’ the information is used correctly however when in the wrong hands, it can increase the likelihood of fraudulent acts committed on innocent people.

eBay has no way of telling which sellers will use the eBay Seller Hub to assist their efforts to scam buyers and which will use it to grow their business in an honest way. So by trying to help honest sellers, they are also helping dishonest sellers with no way to stop scams before they happen. Of course, just like in our previous article on scams perpetrated by eBay buyers, when it comes to the opposite scenario where the scams are perpetrated by eBay sellers, eBay’s only response has been remarkably the same.

Rather than developing a system to prevent scams, the company simply warns buyers about scams they may encounter when shopping for and purchasing products on eBay. Remember that list of scams committed by eBay buyers that can be found on eBay’s online community? Well, there is also a list of scams committed by eBay sellers on eBay’s online community. So without further delay, here are descriptions of some of the scams committed by eBay sellers.

Scams Committed By eBay Sellers That Are Made Easier By The eBay Seller Hub

Fraudulent Item Scam

In this scam, the seller tries to sell an expensive item, like a T.V. or digital camera, that they don’t actually have. When the buyer sends money to pay for it, the seller takes the money and is never heard from again. If the buyer uses PayPal for the purchase, they are protected in case they don’t ever receive the item, but otherwise, they are on their own. By providing a list of best-performing listings and a total count of monthly sales, the eBay Seller Hub includes information that can help a seller determine which expensive product is in demand the most and would be the most likely to attract buyers who will happily pay the price without taking the proper precautions.

Fake/Counterfeit Item Scam

There are counterfeit versions of your favorite brands all over the internet, from Apple iPhones to Oakley and Ray-Ban sunglasses, to Hermes or Chanel handbags. It is often difficult to tell the fake version from the real one. This scam involves an eBay seller choosing to sell, or in some cases accidentally selling, a counterfeit cheaper version of a designer brand item at the normal expensive price, passing it off as the real thing when in fact it is a much cheaper product that has been overpriced. The promoted listings option in the eBay Seller Hub can provide an option for sellers to promote these counterfeit items to buyers, increasing the chances that they will be purchased by making them more visible to those who may be interested in buying them.

Hijacked Account Scam

In this situation, a seller will look for accounts of other sellers who have received a lot of positive feedback from buyers and then hijack the account. That way they are more likely to attract buyers who they can scam because they are using an account with a high rating and pretending to be a different seller. These scammers use dormant accounts so that the real owner of the account is less likely to notice that someone is adding additional listings.

Blame The Shipper For Damaged Item Scam

The seller offers a product and says that it is in excellent condition with a photo that makes it look new (probably a stock photo of the item) and then sends an item that is damaged to the buyer. In this case, the seller claims that the item was damaged during the shipping process and blames the shipper for the problem. The eBay Seller Hub can assist the seller in this instance by providing them with information on which products are most popular at the time, which can help them decide which damaged items to post for sale.

eBay Seller Hub And eBay Seller Scams: Is There A Solution?

Although eBay doesn’t offer a solution to the eBay seller scam issues and the ease at which they can be implemented thanks to the information provided by the eBay Seller Hub, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution at all. AllForCrypto provides a secure e-commerce marketplace for buyers and sellers. The cryptocurrency payment system and the transaction verification and consensus mechanisms of the blockchain technology that our marketplace uses ensure that transactions are safe and fair to buyers.

Imagine an e-commerce marketplace like eBay, but at this new marketplace, you don’t have to worry about the possibility of credit card fraud because credit cards aren’t even an accepted payment option. There’s no reason to worry about them if you don’t have to use them.

With the number of crypto wallet owners steadily rising, the world needs one e-commerce marketplace where people can find everything they need and then purchase the items in their shopping cart with cryptocurrencies. AllForCrypto is that marketplace.

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